Katy Kiefer - Food and Water Watch

This April Fools' Day, we're exposing Monsanto for their blatant attempts to mislead the public about genetically engineered foods. Unfortunately, the Monsanto-backed DARK Act bill is no joke, and could be coming up for a vote again next week. Keep reading for our top five ways Monsanto is trying to fool you and then tell your Senators: don't be a fool — vote NO on the DARK Act!

1. GMOs aren't good for farmers — they increase the corporate control of our food.

Monsanto wants you to think their products are helping farmers, but what they're doing is creating a system where their expensive, engineered seeds are increasingly the only option.1 The food industry is dominated by a handful of powerful corporations that control nearly every aspect of how our food is produced. Monsanto makes a profit by creating a system of products designed to work together — like Monsanto soybeans that are engineered to withstand Roundup, the weed killer produced by Monsanto. If a farmer plants those soybeans, they’ll also buy Roundup. And in our increasingly consolidated food industry, farmers have fewer and fewer options, and the advice they hear at every turn is “go GMO.”

You’ve probably heard that “we need GMOs in order to feed the world,” on the presumption that only GMO crops have a high enough yield to keep up with a growing population. But that simply isn’t true. Studies on certain GMO crops have found little to no yield improvements, and long term studies of organic farming show that organic can match conventional agriculture’s yields. In other cases, biotech companies claim that their GMOs have nutritional benefits. Take “golden rice,” which is supposed to cure vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. Unfortunately, it doesn’t: the beta-carotene in golden rice can’t be absorbed by the body unless combined with certain fats and oils, which is not helpful for people living in poverty with a limited diet.2 Plenty of non-GMO foods, like carrots and sweet potatoes, are rich in vitamin A and don’t require millions of dollars to produce and grow. Golden rice makes for good PR, but it won’t solve the world’s nutritional problems.

Many GMO crops are specifically engineered to resist certain weed killers, like the potentially carcinogenic Roundup, so planting GMOs means that farmers end up using the associated chemicals. Those chemicals end up in the environment and threaten the health of farmers and farmworkers, as well as the communities they live in. The system for making sure these chemicals don’t end up in our food is extremely weak. What’s even worse — because of increased chemical use, the pests are catching up. Over time, weeds and insects develop resistance to the chemicals we use against them.3 The more we use, the faster they adapt. Many common herbicides are no longer effective on our farms, which leaves biotech companies to encourage the use of harsher chemicals, which the pests will eventually adapt to… leading to an arms race of dangerous chemicals where people and the environment will inevitably be the losers.

4. There's no consensus on the safety of GMOs — the research is biased.

There is a great deal of research out there about the safety and effects of GMOs but far too much of it is conducted, funded or otherwise influenced by the biotech industry. Disturbingly, this includes research done at public universities.4 When GMO advocates claim that there’s a “scientific consensus” about GMOs, or that leading scientific organizations are on their side, they’re often cherry-picking points from reports that cast the debate in a more nuanced light. We need more truly independent long-term safety research into the effects of GMOs on our health and the environment. There are plenty of good reasons to be concerned about GMOs. But for consumers who are concerned, it’s not always clear in the marketplace where these crops end up and biotech and food companies are fighting tooth and nail to stop GMO foods from being labeled.

5. The DARK Act would not create a national standard — it would ban GMO labels.

Monsanto's greatest recent offense is the bill that would block states from labeling GMOs.5 Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut have passed laws in support of GMO labeling, and Vermont's law is set to go into effect this July. The DARK Act, which was outrageously named the "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act" in the House, is nothing more than a blatant attempt to block consumers from knowing what's in our food. In addition to blocking states' rights to label GMOs, the bill that the Senate is considering could create a system for labeling that would require calling a 1-800 number, scanning a barcode with your smart phone, or other methods that severely limit access to labeling information. We'll settle for nothing less than mandatory, on-package labeling of GMOs.

Monsanto and the Big Food lobby are the fools if they think they can win against the tremendous public pressure mounting against the DARK Act and the tidal wave of support for GMO labels. Major food companies like Campbells, General Mills, Mars and Kelloggs have announced that they will label GMOs to comply with Vermont's labeling law. We beat the DARK Act in a key Senate vote last month, but it's not over yet.